


The Glory of a Good Pudding

by what_alchemy



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Baking, Birthday, Fluff, M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26512939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: James has finally discovered the date of Francis's birth and devises a plan to celebrate.Whether Francis wants to or not.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 34
Kudos: 116





	The Glory of a Good Pudding

**Author's Note:**

> In celebration of our man's 224th birthday: a fanfic that would surely horrify him.
> 
> With thanks to [icicaille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille/pseuds/icicaille) for the last-minute beta job, the title, and the ongoing squee. <3

Francis had taken great pains to conceal his date of birth on the expedition. At the time, this had irritated James no end—was Francis truly so dour, so miserable, as to deprive the men of the merriment for which fêting him was a thinly-veiled ruse? Was it vanity, as if every man, boy, and officer on the expedition entire did not know Francis to be nearly fifty years of age, and then beyond? Or was it an abiding bitterness—at his status, at Miss Cracroft’s refusal, at James himself—that kept him from embracing his compatriots as he had during his famed time in Antarctica? 

James liked to believe he understood Francis better now. The Francis of the Arctic was the manner of man who simply could not countenance joy because it magnified his own solitude. James hoped he had recovered his joie de vivre in the many months since they had seen each other; for his own part, James had pried the truth of Francis’s birthdate from one Lady Ann Ross, and he quite intended to celebrate.

After the fanfare of their return to England, Francis emerged from his court martial unscathed and with a few grudging medals pinned to his chest. He was even knighted, for all it seemed to embarrass him. In the aftermath, he absconded to visit his sisters in Dublin while James decamped to Watford to stay with William and Elizabeth and complete his convalescence in the bloom of their garden. A letter or three were exchanged, rote and cold—so unlike the Francis he had come to cherish. When even those dropped off, James devised a plan. 

Now, trunk set down and tin of half-baked pudding in hand, James stood on the stoop of Francis’s home, a warm little cottage nestled in a garden of wildflowers in Southend-on-Sea. James was surprised to find it set back on a quiet road far from neighbors and away from the crush of homes overlooking the coast. Francis would not be able to see the sea from here.

James cast the thought away and straightened. He wiped his mouth and his eyes, paid special attention to the corners. He touched his hairline, a habit of which he had not yet divested himself. “Botheration,” he muttered, and ran a hand through his hair. He shook himself and cleared his throat and then rapped thrice on the great brass knocker on the door.

The door swung open to reveal Francis looking lovely and harassed in his shirtsleeves. James’s heart leapt and a grin split his face. He thrust his pudding at Francis.

“Happy birthday, Francis!”

He was treated to the sight of Francis’s wild brow winging upward, eyes wide beneath their perpetual furrow. They were bluer than James had remembered.

“Christ, James,” Francis said, and swung the door wide. “I didn’t receive your letter.”

“I thought to surprise you.” James rocked up on his toes. His cheeks hurt, but Francis merely stared at him as if he were a suspicious mirage. “Come on, man, this pud’s heavier than she looks.”

Francis shivered as if punted unceremoniously from a reverie and stood aside.

“Of course,” he said. “Come in. The kitchen is in the back.”

James swept inside and took in the low-burning fire under the hearth, the dark wood furniture, the books and papers stacked high in corners and on surfaces and atop shelves. Somewhere in the flurry he caught a glimpse of Francis’s sextant. He found the kitchen a wide and airy space with an entire closed range up against the far wall.

“Oh!” James exclaimed. “You cook, Francis?”

“It came with the house,” Francis grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

James set the pudding down and rested his hip against a table, brows raised. One corner of James’s mouth quirked up, and Francis sighed. 

“I am a man who lives alone,” he said. “There’s a woman from town who comes once a week and does the tidying up and the laundry, and sometimes she deigns to make me a meal, but other than that…” He made a helpless sort of gesture at the range.

“I suppose you’re missing Jopson,” James said.

“I would not clip the wings of a newly minted lieutenant just because I like his manner.” Francis smiled a bit for the first time, but James could detect a melancholia about the eyes.

“Well,” James said, turning from him to trail a hand over the range’s iron edge, “if you’ll indulge me, _Sir_ Francis, I’d like to bake this pudding the rest of the way and toast you on this auspicious day.” 

“Oh, pray, do not call me that,” Francis said, peevish. James looked up to find Francis pinching the bridge of his nose. James failed to suppress his smile. 

“You do not find it a great honor?”

Francis swiped at his brow and would not meet James’s eye. He bent beside the range and opened its little door to feed it some firewood.  
  
“I take it by the case you left outside that you intend to stay,” he said, more to the ash than to James.

James felt a frisson of cold lick up his belly even as his heart dropped directly into it. He swallowed and directed his gaze to the pudding, whose lid he lifted in the absence of anything else with which to occupy himself. He kept his tone light when he responded. 

“Only by your leave, Francis,” he said. “There’s a late train back to London I will catch after we—after.”

Francis fiddled with some matches and set the bellows against the lip of the opening to stoke embers to flames.

“I am not good company, James,” he said after the silence had dragged on too long. 

James’s smile felt brittle.

“A captain will forgive his second a difference of opinion, I hope.”

Francis did look up then, a wan little smile curving his mouth upward.

“You’re welcome to stay,” he said. “I mean not to be a boor; I simply would not have you do so out of obligation, or politeness.”

After James had laid himself bare before him, before God and the ice and all the trials of hell, Francis had anchored him to this world with hands on his shoulders and bestowed upon him his good opinion. Francis had taken him into his confidence and forged a plan forward with him at his side instead of in opposition. Francis had held him as he begged for death. Had pressed his own forehead to James’s wasted chest and murmured, “Forgive me, forgive me, I cannot.” Had dragged what was left of James across ice and snow to Ross’s rescue ship, his lemon juice, his iron-rich meat from unsullied tins. Francis had saved James’s life.

“Francis,” James said, chiding. “Are we not beyond politeness now?”

Francis wet his lips and looked away, stepping back from the flame. He held the bellows out to James.

“I cede the floor to the master baker,” he said. James snorted and took the bellows.

“Hardly that,” James said. He bent to peer into the range, held his hand near the door to test the temperature, and then pumped the bellows a few more times before setting it down and closing the range door.

“Am I permitted to know what this pudding that will surely be ruining our supper is?” Francis said.

“Oh!” James clapped his hands and beamed. Francis’s attempt to appear resigned to James’s antics was middling at best. “There’s this young Irish fellow by the name of Michael who runs telegrams in my neighborhood, and I asked him, Michael, what’s the dish you miss most from home? And he said—” James cleared his throat and made his best run at a Dublin accent. “—Me mam’s soda bread fer sure, sir, oh, I miss me aul mammy so.”

“He did not say it like that!”

“He did, Francis, on my honor!”

Francis’s laugh was more of a snort, but James caught a glimpse of the gap in his front teeth nonetheless.

“I cannot believe this was the man who convinced an entire complement of men on a ship he was Turkish,” Francis said.

James made a show of flourishing his hair as he took a bow. Francis guffawed. But then his face grew grim and his eyes filled with such pity that James sobered in an instant and held his breath to calm his rabbit’s heart.

“James, I have to tell you,” Francis said. “That’s not soda bread.”

James threw his head back and laughed. As if by its own accord, one of his hands flung itself forward and slapped Francis on the shoulder. Francis was laughing through his nose, watching him slantways.

“Oh, you’re a prick, Francis,” James said. Francis bared his teeth in a feral grin. “I couldn’t very well arrive on your doorstep with naught but a silly loaf of bread, could I? So I toiled making this bread, three, four times earlier this week, ’til it was right according to our friend Michael—”

“You made this _yourself?_ ”

“Obviously,” James said, waving a hand. “Cook did supervise lest I burn the house down, and may have given me a tip here or there, but other than that, I assure you this is a genuine James Fitzjames you have here, Francis.” He knocked on the tin. Francis took on the appearance of a mournful cat, but James forged on. “So when Michael told me it was right, I gave it a couple of days to get a bit stale, and then I made it into the bread pudding you see before you. A much more festive thing to eat on one’s birthday, don’t you think?”

Francis peered into the pudding with a jaundiced eye. 

“How did you find out about that anyway?” he said. His gaze swept up James’s body, and when he met his eyes James had to force himself not to quail at the bald attention.

“Your Lady Ann does despair of you here all alone,” he said. “Have a care and write her, will you?”

“I write fortnightly!” Francis cried.

“To Sir James!”

Francis groaned and flicked the hair from his eyes. It had grown a bit longer than he would have kept it, had he not retired with honors from Her Majesty’s Discovery Service. It brought to mind those last icebound, shaggy days in the Arctic, but James resolved not to mention it.

“I am beset by correspondence!” Francis groused. 

James turned away so he would not have to bear the weight of Francis’s aimless ire any longer. He opened the door to the range. The temperature felt reasonable, and so he donned two mitts and transferred the pudding into the range. 

“It shouldn’t take long,” he said, shutting the door. “Half done as it is.”

“You needn’t have gone to the trouble,” Francis said. “I am perfectly—”

“Hush,” James said. “How else am I meant to contrive the opportunity to see my dearest friend, when he is so beset by correspondence that I am obliged to harass _his_ dearest friends for his new address?”

Francis had the decency to look abashed when James stood tall and squared his shoulders as if meeting Francis’s eyes were akin to facing his fate before a firing squad. 

“I did mean to write you, James,” Francis said. “But, time…” He shook his head as though he were helpless against all the things that had absorbed his attention in the near-year since last they had beheld one another. James took pity on him.

“I’m here now,” he said. “Come—let us repair to the drawing room, where you can tell me what has so occupied your time all these many months.”

James retrieved his modest trunk from the stoop and produced an hourglass from within. He set it beside himself when he settled before the fire and Francis insisted upon serving him tea. When Francis apologized for not having brandy, or spirits of any kind, James waved him off. He wanted to tell Francis he was proud of him—proud to have seen him become the captain he always wished so fervently he would be, proud to have been his second, proud to stand in the shadow of his strength and resolve against the drink, the mutiny, the Tuunbaq. But he was not certain this Francis was his Francis. He was not certain this Francis had the ears to hear James anymore. Sadness suffused him, but he hummed and laughed and exclaimed through Francis’s accounting of all he’d done since Christmas. 

His spinster sisters in Dublin—The Twins, as he persisted in calling them— were well. They were a bit creaky these days and afflicted with gout, but otherwise they had escaped the ravages of the famine neatly enough. He visited his eldest sister and her brood—including great-grandchildren, he was shocked to discover—in Belfast, but was too late to see the two brothers closest to him in age alive, and thus paid his respects to their graves in Banbridge. One more sister, younger than he, was yet living there, and he stayed with her and her family for a fortnight, waiting for the lambing. 

Since returning to England and taking up residence here in Southend-on-Sea, Francis had been occupied writing papers on various scientific subjects such as magnetism and Arctic fauna, which he had apparently had time to study over the course of their disaster. To his chagrin, James learned that Francis did, in fact, carry on a robust correspondence with Harry Goodsir, and together they wrote furiously and with verve in the hopes of achieving publication by the Royal Society. Goodsir was politely hellbent on convincing the whole of England that the Netsilik were not savages, and he believed he could prove it through science and rationality. Francis, though he agreed, had seen and felt too deeply the sting of English contempt, and thus could not share the optimism of his erstwhile ship’s surgeon. James expressed his accord with Francis’s assessment, and Francis looked at him with eyes full of the esteem James had been missing. The moment stretched, clogging James’s chest with humidity until Francis dropped his eyes and cleared his throat, shifting in his seat. 

“I’m a terrible boor, talking about myself for so long,” Francis said, gruff. “Tell me, James. How is your brother? How is his wife?”

William, James told him, was sickly as ever but overjoyed to see James again. Elizabeth had wept copiously into his hair before drawing herself up, drying her tears, and committing steadfast to her duty to make a great fuss over him. Thus he was borne, as if by the force of her will alone, into a featherbed, where he was coddled and cooed at until the final tendrils of scurvy left him. They had three children: Young Will, little Lizzie, and the infant James, which James related to Francis after swallowing the lump in his throat. At length, James spoke of days spent rollicking with the children, reading to them, educating them, and even changing a nappy or two when the nurse or Elizabeth were otherwise occupied. He carefully thought little on the question of his commission as he reacquainted himself with his brother and his wife, and spent long hours listening to all the minutiae of their lives since he’d left them.

“But I could not reciprocate,” he said, risking a glance at Francis. “They would ask me about the expedition, and, Francis, it was as if I could not speak.” He expected Francis to make a jape— _James Fitzjames, speechless? Fetch me my smelling salts!_ —but Francis only regarded him with those fathomless blue eyes, churning with a feeling James could not name. Francis leaned over and laid a hand on James’s knee, and James thought himself a fool for the way peace settled over him as surely as it had that day he unburdened himself at Victory Point. “I tell them diverting little tales—something funny Jacko did, or the time Fagin bested Neptune in their duel over a rat—but they know I am far from them, even in the warmth of their parlor.”

James hesitated, but he lashed his courage to himself like a shield and set his hand upon Francis’s where it lay on his knee. He squeezed the strong, solid fingers there, and Francis squeezed back.

“Ever we wish for horror not to touch the ones we love,” Francis said, his voice rough. “Those barbarities enacted upon us…” Francis’s jaw clenched as he shook his head. “The atrocities _we _committed—these are ours alone to bear. We cannot taint our loved ones with that knowledge. Why do you think I moved so far away?”__

__James tried a laugh, but it came out an aggrieved huff, half sob._ _

__“Truthfully?” he said, and Francis’s mouth curved upward, eyes twinkling. “I thought you a curmudgeon pleased to turn your back on all the society fêtes and Admiralty obligations thrust upon you.”_ _

__“That too,” Francis said. He squeezed James’s hand again._ _

__The sand in the hourglass had run out. James stroked the pat of flesh at the base of Francis’s thumb. Funny—these calloused old sailor’s hands were so soft, just there._ _

__“I have to check on the pudding,” he whispered._ _

__Francis withdrew his hand and stood. James shivered at the loss of his touch, but repaired to the kitchen. The pudding had set, and though the edges were perhaps over-browned, the center yet wobbled as Cook informed him—at length—it should. He pulled it out of the range and set it on a trivet Francis had placed on the table. The two of them watched steam rise from its rocky surface as though it were ice to be studied and interpreted for the day’s report._ _

__“It smells good,” Francis said. “What did you put in it?”_ _

__“Sultanas,” James said. “Vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom.”_ _

__“Christ, James, that’s—”_ _

__“Oh, do not say expensive,” James cried. “Do not say you don’t deserve it. I wanted to make you something for your birthday. I wanted it to be worthy of you.”_ _

__Francis’s eyes were bluer when he flushed. His lips parted as if he needed to draw deeper breath._ _

__“I got you nothing for yours,” he said, voice a bramble._ _

__James nearly growled. Irritated, he swiped hair away from his face before his fist came down on the table._ _

__“You are impossible, Francis Crozier!” he said. “I want nothing from you but your esteem, and for you to know the depth of mine. I run no endless tally in my mind of what we owe each other, because what are sweets and trinkets against the whole of our lives? I would—” Something reckless swept through him, the same manner of wind that once blew him across the desert on a camel, or to an inverts’ whorehouse in Singapore, or chasing after a lost ship in India. He swallowed and then spat out the words. “I would _eat you up just like this pudding_ , Francis, if I thought for one moment you’d let me!”_ _

__The table stood between them with the pudding steaming away. Francis reached over it nonetheless and cupped James’s face, drawing reverent thumbs over the arches of his cheeks. James trembled at the touch but dared not look away._ _

__“I’d let you,” Francis said, low and rough. “As long as you never call me Sir Francis again.”_ _

__James barked out a laugh even as that vexing lump rose in his throat again. He reached up to ring Francis’s wrists, to keep him just as he was in this perfect moment._ _

__“Will I ever be privy as to why not?” he asked._ _

__Francis’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. Could he hear it, the thundering of James’s heart?_ _

__“All those men,” Francis said. “One hundred and twenty-eight in my care—thirty-four returned to England with beating hearts, some less a digit or a limb or a handful teeth, all worse for wear. And all those natives dead because we trusted a snake. No passage, only damage. How anyone can call me Sir Francis without sneering, I do not know. I should have moved ten miles east to Foulness Island.”_ _

__James wanted to preserve the feeling of Francis’s touch, but he slid his hands up to catch Francis’s and pulled them down only to press a fervid kiss to his knuckles. Francis’s breath shuddered out of him. He murmured James’s name. James looked up and held tight to both of Francis’s hands._ _

__“You _should_ have been knighted alongside Sir James Ross,” he said. “You should have been our first on the last expedition—The Crozier Expedition. You should have had the Admiralty groveling at your feet to lead them to the glory for which they would sacrifice every man and officer. You should not be doing penance for imagined sins in exile—in Essex!”_ _

__Francis leaned his body entire over the table, over the pudding, and pressed his lips to James’s mouth. It was soft and dry and barely a touch, but electricity sang up James’s spine and lit him as if his guts were kindling. The table was too large between them, and Francis rocked back onto his feet on the other side soon enough, color high, blinking as if stunned._ _

__“Stay,” he blurted. “Stay with me, here, James.”_ _

__“Where you lead I follow, Francis,” James said, voice humid. “You know that.”_ _

__Francis reached across the table again and tangled his fingers with James’s._ _

__“I missed you terribly,” he said._ _

__James wanted to touch that dear face. He wanted to stroke the hair away from that proud brow. He settled for holding tight to the hand in his._ _

__“I’m a bad penny, Francis,” he said. “I’ll always find you.”_ _

__“The best and shiniest penny, I’m sure,” Francis said. “You look well, James.”_ _

__“I am,” James said. He was yet regaining the tone in his muscles, but he could walk without tiring now, and he had left the sensation of glass grinding in his joints at sea. If he was less a toe and a few teeth, well. At least his hair had grown back. “Even better now I’m here.”_ _

__“I’m so glad, James,” Francis said._ _

__When it had sufficiently cooled, James served them each a square of the soda bread pudding with a dollop of clotted cream on top. He watched with naked expectation as Francis fed himself the first bite. Francis hummed and nodded—an exaggerated pantomime. James sighed. Perhaps it was time to write to some twins in Dublin—someone who would have Francis’s mother’s recipe._ _

__“Out with it,” he said. “What’s wrong with it?”_ _

__Francis made a face like a schoolboy caught abusing himself by a nun. James nearly laughed._ _

__“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Francis said quickly. “It’s very good, James. I do hope we can eat it all before it spoils.”_ _

__“But it’s not like your mum’s, is it?”_ _

__“Was it supposed to be?”_ _

__“It was supposed to be comforting! Something familiar from home.”_ _

__Francis pressed his lips together, but James could see the smile attempting to break through._ _

__“James, my mother never made soda bread,” he said._ _

__James made some undignified, incredulous sound in place of words._ _

__“I’ve never had it except on my late sojourn with my sisters,” Francis went on. “Bicarb, isn’t it? I never saw the like, and by the time it graced every kitchen across Ireland, I was a man who did not go home.”_ _

__James leaned back in his chair, raking both hands through his hair. He laughed._ _

__“That’s what I get, asking for advice from a lad young enough to be your son.”_ _

__Up went the brow._ _

__“I am graciously allowing that to pass in order to tell you this pudding is lovely, and perfect, and the best pudding I’ve ever had the pleasure of placing upon my tongue.”_ _

__“Oh, you’re a liar, Captain Crozier.”_ _

__“You impugn me, sir,” Francis said, eyes sparkling. He fed himself another bite and groaned indecently around the morsel in his mouth._ _

__James darted in to steal a pudding-flavored kiss. Francis was pleasantly pink when he pulled away._ _

__“Happy birthday, Francis,” James said._ _

__Perhaps it was the heat of the range, but James fancied it was Francis’s kiss that drove all memories of cold away._ _

__

__**End** _ _


End file.
